Autonomous floor treatment appliances, in particular vacuum cleaning and mopping robots, are used for autonomous cleaning and care of floor surfaces. The commercially available autonomous floor treatment appliances achieve cleaning performance levels which substantially eliminate the need for manual secondary cleaning of the floor surface. However, the problem here is that the cleaning action of the known autonomous floor treatment appliances has heretofore been limited to those regions of a floor surface which are traversable by the autonomous floor treatment appliance. Wall portions that are close to the floor and bound a floor surface to be cleaned, such as wall bases or baseboards, are not cleaned, or cleaned only to a very limited extent, by autonomous floor treatment appliances. However, since dust and dirt particles accumulate especially on such wall portions close to the floor, these wall portions continuously require manual secondary cleaning. This contradicts the concept of autonomous floor cleaning by autonomous floor treatment appliances.
The prior art describes autonomous floor treatment appliances having side brushes. These side brushes enable autonomous floor treatment appliances to remove dust and dirt particles also from edge regions of a floor surface to be cleaned. However, since these side brushes are oriented toward the floor surface to be cleaned, they are not suitable for cleaning wall portions close to the floor, such as wall bases or baseboards. In particular, if the wall portions close to the floor form an exposed front face, they are not reached or cleaned by the side brushes.